PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Hello Cow

Had to bone up on herb botany a bit to answer.

Thanks for looking into this.

Salvia Hispanica (Chia) is a type of sage. Apparently, (I have never eaten it) it has nutritive value raw. If it truly does not require cooking, and as it is more of an herb seed than grass seed (Salvia Officinalis leaves are quite edible and tasty as common sage) I would put it well down the nastiness gradient along with rice (which I occasionally eat, fwiw)

Yes, chia seeds can be and usually are eaten whole and raw. Their husks are sufficiently delicate that they easily break down in the human digestive track. Just leaving chia seeds in water for 10 or 20 minutes will break them down and turn the water to a gel.

As far as flax, my familiarity with Linum Usitatissamum is mostly as an amatuer woodworker. Linseed oil is a polymerizing oil in varnishes and oil based paints in use for centuries. Flax as fiber is well known also. Eating flaxseed I am more skeptical of. From Wikipedia:

"Flax seeds are chemically stable while whole, and milled flaxseed can be stored at least 4 months at room temperature with minimal or no changes in taste, smell, or chemical markers of rancidity.[4] Ground flaxseed can go rancid at room temperature in as little as one week.[5] Refrigeration and storage in sealed containers will keep ground flax from becoming rancid for even longer."

Yes, flax seeds are inferior to chia seeds in various ways. The raw seeds have a shorter shelf life. The raw seeds have too strong a husk to be broken down in the digestive track without first cracking or grinding them. Once cracked or ground, flax seeds turn rancid quickly. I only consume flax seeds either in the form of freshly ground seeds, or in the form of flax seed oil which has been handled rather like raw milk - kept refrigerated from the beginning with a limited shelf life (perhaps a week for the milk and a month or two for the flax oil.) Also it is claimed (at least by the chia seed vendors ;)) that chia seeds have more nutritional value than flax seeds.

When you read that any food can avoid degradation without refrigeration or storage, realize that if it is a seed, that is because there are glycoproteins protecting it in the hull. The above paragraph tells you that eating whole or crushed flaxseed is exposing you to those glycoproteins that are meant to protect the seed. If you cook it this will be mitigated, but probably not eliminated. In sum, although it is not a true grass, I would see eating flax seeds as closer to wheat than the chia seeds.

Could you elaborate on your concerns with glycoproteins? I did not have that word on my list of "bad" substances prior to now. Looking it up, at for example Glycoproteins , the word "glycoproteins" seems to refer to a wide class of compounds, with many useful biological functions.

What's so bad about them?

Also the chia seed vendors frequently claim (without adequate explanation or references) that the reason chia seeds have a long shelf life is that they contain plenty of anti-oxidants (a "good" word in nutrition circles these days.)

All I see so far is that the "good" word "anti-oxidants", and the (in your presentation) "bad" word "glycoprotein" are both being credited with the long shelf life of chia seeds. These two words might even be referrring to the same compounds in this case?

I don't know what to think.

I am aware that folks are eating flax and I suppose chia for the health benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids, principally a -linolenic acid. As summarized below, I believe the significance of 03s is just their ratio with 06s.

Chia seeds have a wide variety of nutrients, including various vitamins and proteins, besides their oils. It is said that an Aztec warrior could run all day on a tablespoon of chia seeds and water.

To achieve a healthy and evolutionarily appropriate 6:3 ratio, just avoid unnatural sources of excess 6's like grain fed beef, and especially all the popular plant seed derived cooking oils like corn and even rapeseed (canola) and avoid margarine and other machine age oils. Cook with Butter, Coconut or olive oil and no need for supplementation

I also recommend macadamia nut oil. Lard, coconut or macadamia nut oils hold up to the heat of cooking better than most other oils.

The same goes for fish oil which is probably harmless.

The problem with fish oil in my view is that in the most commonly consumed form, capsules, it goes rancid, and what's worse, does so without being noticed, as the oil is not tasted when swallowed.

I encourage those who regularly consume fish oil pills to break one open every month and taste the oil. If it still has the light fresh oil flavor one would happily put on ones salad, then good. Most likely it will have a slightly fishy, offish taste. Throw the entire bottle of them out in that event. Rancid oil, even mildly rancid, is worth than nothing in my view (unless one is near death from starvation ;).) The only separated fish oils I consume are in glass bottles, were kept refrigerated, and are marked for shelf life. I recommend Carlson's Cod Liver Oil.

My recommended source if you insist on more 03s is King Oscar sardines packed in olive oil -they are delicious!

I'll have to give them a try. I have eaten plenty of other canned sardines over the years, but not found one that was all that delicious. Thanks.

And thanks again for the detailed and considered response.

[c1ue]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger,

Thank you for posting your views and experience.

Thank you also those who also have contributed in this long thread.

I must say that most of my 1st order questions were addressed in the previous 5 pages of posts, but I still would ask one:

While humans indubitably were evolved to be omnivorous, studies of omnivorous monkeys like chimpanzees show that consumption of meat is not a daily occurrence.

http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~stanford/chimphunt.html

This seems to show that even for highly evolved, community social, and tool using chimpanzees, meat comprises only 3% of total diet. The link also seems to indicate high seasonality of meat consumption.

Secondly I also note a previously endemic problem in rich people in the Middle Ages: gout. This was I believe due to a diet mostly meat and wine.

Lastly the point about grains is somewhat unclear to me. The point about insulin is an interesting one - certainly it is at a convergence point between the refined sugar/processed food and caloric restriction regimes. However, the real problem isn't necessarily the grains so much as it may be the ease of processing.

While it is quite possible to eat huge amounts of calories via other foods - it is damned hard work. The scientist who went around eating what chimpanzees ate experienced this - foods in nature are very low density in terms of calories vs. weight without cooking. It may well be that the problem is due to the combination of (cooking and modern processing) and grains allowing greedy humans to eat too much too easily and too often.

The point of all this may simply be moderation.

While eating meat itself isn't necessarily bad, it seems that too much of anything is the problem. I don't fad diet, but my friends who've tried Atkins have told me that they just end up eating less over time as meat with no grains is simply distasteful after a short while.

The changes in Italian diet vs. health may not be so much a quality as a quantity issue. Ditto for South Asians at home vs. the US - though a breakout of rich Indian women in India vs. the US would be fascinating (unlike most of Asia, big is beautiful there).

My personal motto is: everything in moderation, including at times moderation!

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Spartacus, you seem like another rotten fish and raw caribou guy, like me.

I was for a time

I donate blood at the maximum frequency, and several times my ferritin levels have dropped extremely low ... (despite the extremely high steak & liver intake ... pate, YUMmmmm) every time I got myself tested for tapeworm

I NEVER eat pork anything less than well cooked, by the way. NEVER EVER EVER.

unfortunately my life and finances "took a turn", as this shows ...

http://itulip.com/forums/showthread....suet#post76301

(although part of this was an intellectual exercise in low cost housing and eating)

I have however, moved again and there's cheap local meat available here. still not as cheap as the isolates were when the Canadian dollar was high, but As soon as I finish some stockpiles I'll be back to the paleo

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

The absence of a significant correlation with cancer reports in the five years of the study doesn't tell me much of anything.

I should have made clear - I was pointing more to the blog than the study.

the blog's author's point was that large studies that disprove or question the positive spin on vegetables got dropped

A good way to reach your pre - agreed - upon conclusions? Elide disconfirming data.

The media and medical industry seems determined to spin veggies into a no-lose, always-win proposition

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

after hundreds of generations of humans lived through extreme genetic selection pressure "if you cannot digest grains, you die"

you might think humans COULD live with grains today ...

celiac, crohn's, gluten intolerance

and other stuff that just keeps coming ... ldl particle size, GERD ...

do you know much about what's happening with the Inuit & Yupik? 2 populations that recently started moving to a high grain diet?

[jimmygu3]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Your suggestion to avoid grains is incorrect.
A little common-sense thinking will demonstrate this.

How do you think agriculture started? Do you think that one day humans woke up and said, "Let's start eating grains"? No.

Before the advent of agriculture, humans were already eating grains that they foraged. They then discovered that if they planted grain seeds in one location, they could make their gathering process more efficient. That was the birth of agriculture.

Also, you fail to note that carbohydrate-rich tubers were a large part of the pre-agriculture diet. Grains were able to take the place of these foraged carbohydrate sources because they are nutritionally similar in macronutrients.

You also fail to point out that the "problematic" chemicals in grains are destroyed by first soaking, then cooking. (Traditionally, grains were soaked overnight before cooking, or made into bread dough and allowed to ferment for many hours.) Fire for cooking has been used for some 125,000 years, plenty of time for genetic adaptation.

I suggest that those studying the topic of nutrition not become overwhelmed by the "science", and use common sense to understand the bigger picture. (See my post here: http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...7133#post97133)

Good points, raja. I am also curious about the life span of paleolithic people. This link says it was 30-35. Doesn't make me want to emulate their diet.

Eliminating or cutting way back on refined sugar and white flour seems like a good step for most people. I look at what the healthiest people I know eat, and it really comes down to lots of vegetables and everything else in moderation.

Jimmy

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger,

my friends who've tried Atkins have told me that they just end up eating less over time as meat with no grains is simply distasteful after a short while.

I LOVED my mother's Indian food - 99% vegetables, wheat, potatoes, rice, lentils. Still love indian food of all types. Living with my grandmother in Punjab (price of stringy, tough meat = 5 to 10 times the price of dahl) for a couple of months last year was hog heaven for me (though very bad for my health & blood lipids, I found after getting back)

So I'll give you one more data point - the more meat I ate/eat, the more I like it.

The last steak I had was a poor cut, badly cooked and it tasted better than the $100 filet mignon I had in NY 5 years ago.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

6s and 3s and the logic of grain avoidance

Although cows are herbivores, eating predominantly seeds is not really healthy for them either. Beef cows and steers are fed grains (grass seeds like corn) for the financial benefit of humans who raise them, not for the health of the animal. The animal naturally eats grasses. When you feed it just grass seeds, you are giving it something it previously ate in small quantities in huge amounts - a quantitative difference becomes qualitative. The animal will put on more weight faster, will mature quicker and will have muscle that is excessively laden with fat. This fat it adds will go from a 6:3 ratio of 1.5 -2 to more like 10-15, due to the outsize preponderance of 6s in grass seeds. The chemical composition of the animal is now changed for the worse and worse for you if you eat it. You can imagine how many fish oil capsules it takes to re-balance the 15:1 ratio of grain fed beef. I believe its much more effective to just avoid the extra 6s in the first place in the ways I have suggested. When you eat too many 6s, whatever the source, your immune system is weakened against infection and there is evidence that cancer cell growth is promoted. The upside of grain for the farmer is higher profits because the animal can reach market weight and be sold a whole year earlier. This is why grass fed beef is more expensive, even it is not certified organic. (As a side note, beware of grass fed beef that is finished with grains to make it "tastier". The grass-fed animal can have its healthy 6:3 ratio ruined with as little as six weeks of grain feeding)

Now here is more evidence for avoiding grains in the optimal human diet. Can you see how the recommendation against grains is not predicated at all on carnivory? A cow is an herbivore eating no animals at all, is well adapted to eating only plants, can synthesize all its necessary amino acids from relatively monotonous plant sources, and is basically a plant-eating machine. Yet, we have just seen that feeding this herbivore corn makes it mature faster, gain weight abnormally, literally alters the chemical composition of its cell membranes, and as is evident to anyone who eats beef, the animal's immune function is seriously disturbed by the excess 06 fatty acids. How so? Bovines fattened on corn must be given antibiotics to gain weight. This is because the grain-fed animal is more susceptible to infection. Now part of this is feedlot epidemiology, but I believe much of it is because the excess 6s interfere with 03 metabolism necessary for proper immune function. As a result of this antibiotic feeding, and perhaps also due to the immune disturbance itself, the cows gut is susceptible to e. coli overgrowth, and you have to worry about ending up with a colostomy every time you eat a hamburger.

Now if the case is compelling that an herbivore is healthier without grains and our health can be affected by eating the flesh of an herbivore that is fed too many grains, why isn't it reasonable to ask if an omnivore like us might not be better off without them? Before agriculture, seeds were a trivial to nonexistent, and certainly not necessary, part of our diet. The weight of the evidence here is pretty convincing. I have seen no evidence that any common grain (wheat, wheat flour, barley, oats, rice) was necessary for life before agriculture, and no evidence that they offer anything you cannot get with the huge variety of edible vegetables that have better vitamin, phytochemical and nutrient density than any grain. Of course, ounce per ounce, nothing can compare to an egg (even chimpanzees eat them) or lightly cooked piece of fish or grass fed steak for protein, vitamin and essential fatty acids. So I hope you can see that grain avoidance depends in no way on humans being "carnivores". We are further along that scale than what vegans or your average teenage girl in North America can accept, but that is simply not a necessary part of the argument against grains.

Cats and dogs are carnivores and can survive on fortified cereal when humans force them to eat it.

Cows are herbivores that eat nothing buts plants, but grains in their diet have negative health effects for them as well.

Humans are omnivores that now have a hugely expanded ecological niche through the technology of adapting rot resistant carbohydrate rich seeds that can be stored, milled, ground up cooked and eaten, mechanically planted and fertilised with the aid of petroleum, bred for higher yields, and even genetically engineered. They have thrived and expanded to 6 B souls on a finite planet despite the fact that grains are not an optimal food source at the level of the individual. Remember that the gene is the unit of selection. Grains are adaptive at the level of the gene and increasing human poplulation. Your genes do not care if you get coeliac disease, heart disease, diabetes, degenerative arthritis, tooth decay, autoimmune disorders, cancer or alzheimer dementia if by eating grains you were able to avoid famine just long enough to reproduce.

Look beyond the very misleading inter-country and even intracountry observational studies, which you could spend a lifetime trying to parse. Do pay attention to any controlled randomized trial that is well done. Do pay atention to the archaeological record. Do use some inductive reasoning with comparative anatomy, endocrinology and other basic sciences. The assumption that somebody more primitive and less "american" than us doing the right thing is a seductive idea - OK - go with that and stop thinking about modern diets at all whether rural poor or city fast food. Start thinking about a diet that is not a diet at all, just a set of parameters that characterized 99% of our relevant evolutionary past. Huge variation in foods eaten, but no sugar or mechanically produced white flour, no metal bowls to cook grains in, no cultivation, and the staples are available year round.

For most people in most places of food abundance, that will be a relatively low-carb diet with no grains.

[raja]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

You are free to make that interpretation. I don't.

Where is your evidence for this speculation?

RM,

The idea behind rational debate is to further understanding regardless on which side the truth falls. The rules are: you present your idea. I counter and give my reasons for disagreement. Then you respond giving your reasons why I might be wrong, and so on.

"You are free to make that interpretation. I don't," is not an acceptable response. Someone who gives one-liner retorts without providing their reasoning either doesn't have the facts to back up their assertions, has some self-interest (like a book to sell), or believes the "opponent" to be not worth their time (arrogance). I don't know which it is in your case, but I'm not going to respond to your replies to my posts in the future if you do not accord me due respect.

I understand that many here are impressed by your erudition and ideas, and I'm only responding to this post so that others can put your comments in perspective. When I ignore a curt RM reply in the future, I do not want people to think that I am conceding his point.

You asked for evidence of my "speculation". I am surprised that with your medical training you are not aware of the answers. Perhaps medical education is more deficient than I thought :eek:

As opposed to a nomadic lifestyle, living in stationary and/or crowded conditions as those found in pre-industrial agricultural societies does the following to shorten lifespan and overall health:

1. Fosters the spread of communicable diseases and parasites.

2. Increases unsanitary conditions due to improper disposal of waste from humans and animals.

3. Increases pests that spread disease such as rats, mice and flies.

4. Enhances the likelihood of catching diseases from domestic animals (e.g., brucellosis, etc.)

5. Reduces variety in the diet.

You point to the shorter lifespan and stature of agricultural societies as being attributable to eating grains, when it could clearly be due to other factors such as those listed above.

I look forward to your response to the other three points I mentioned that contradict your assertions about the undesirability of grains . . . but if you're just going to give me one-liners in response, don't bother.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I apologize for the brevity of my response. I was quite busy this morning.

I meant and should have said, can you give me your references re: how the change in stature is not related to the transition to grain consumption?

Did not mean to imply I had not heard those arguments before.

[Prazak]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

All kidding aside swgprop - for this untutored observer "there is likely not that much of a book to write" on sensible eating - for losing weight and building up immune strength. Lots of fresh vegetables and modest but regular portions of meat and nutrient rich eggs do all the heavy lifting. Throw in a little fresh fruit. Radical enough for U? Eat no fresh vegetables, get sick. Eat lots of fresh vegetables packed with phytonutrients, minerals and natural vitamins, and get healthy. What is the big fuss and bother? Which special diet have you heard of which omitted these essentials?

Wow, Lukester, I usually enjoy your posts but your dogmatism on this point is striking.

Taking an evolutionary view of human diet is a perfectly legitimate aim of scholarship. What's wrong with examining how and what the homo genus ate over the course of 2 million years of evolution and comparing the physiology of that to what humans have eaten during the past 10,000 years of agricultural development and the past 200 years of industrialized development? I don't know why the topic has to be disparaged as excessively parochial, or why rebuttal has to be grounded on one's internationalism or lack thereof.

Those of us who are willing to keep an open mind and examine the research are fat Americans who have failed to experience the world? The only one here banging on about the diet of any one particular nation is you, and the only one throwing around cultural stereotypes is you. Taking an evolutionary viewpoint to human diet and an open mind to scientific research would seem to be much less parochial than extrapolating from the Italian diet circa 1959.

Don't get me wrong, I love Italy, I love Mediterranean cultures generally and have come to embrace a Mediterranean diet and lifestyle. But to rubbish the mere act of scientific inquiry into the glycemic effect of white bread, on grounds that white bread has long been a staple at Italian dinner tables, is about as rational a response as rubbishing inquiry into the carcinogenic effect of tobacco on grounds that Italians have long enjoyed a good smoke with their morning espressos.

But hey, Italians live long, so a smoke and a double-shot is good for you -- and if you dare suggest that there's evidence to the contrary, well, you're a parochial American idiot who's never been to a proper tabacchi.

[Guest]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Prazak - Nobody drums up a cottage industry in "revolutionary diet books" like Americans. Nobody even remotely approximates the number of diet books this country cranks out. Why do you think that is? Why do you think it is, that very few of those diet books are simple collections of the healthful recipes from all over the world - but rather - they all instead propose a "revolutionary new understanding" of the basis of really healthy nutrition, which implies all these other nations could benefit from our latest groundbreaking nutrition ideas instead?

Why also when posing such a revolutionary concept, do fans of revolutionary new nutition theories promptly ignore the healthful cooking from all over the world, in those many places where people simply don't have all the illnesses which these modern students of nutrition rail on about? It is the cultural hubris of a nation whose own food traditions are among the least civilized on the planet, although Americans evidently love to assert that we must devolve understanding of sound nutrition to our (American!) doctors. I don't know how to put it any more plainly than that. Is it not clear enough?

We have produced many many many revolutionary diet books in this country, while other nations produce few to none - and I wll wager you that in fifty more years we will produce many more diet books. Each one causes the fad conscious Americans to forget or choose to disregard the one that came before- or at very least their memory of their past dietary enthusiasms dims in the light and glamour of the newfound version. On and on it goes.

And no, I have zero interest in "glorifying Italy" - I include in my admiration for the sensible quality of their tradtional (not modern) diet, an equal admiration for the diets of many other nations. You may be misunderstanding the general point I wished to make. We have had many **many** doctors having Eureka moments about what constitutes a wise diet for men, and this begs the question - why so many of these, in America alone?

At least they might consider restricting themselves to recommending such a diet for the nutritionally dysfunctional Americans, rather than suggesting 2000-5000 year old other cultures need to completely revamp their own ideas on nutrition. It is the cultural hubris, which I remark on. Also last time I checked, we were approaching a population of seven billion in the world, and a great number of these people only dream of eating meat at all.

Can you imagine the scorn (or even just plain bewilderment) that many of these would feel to read yet another American doctor suggesting that they must all eat more meat and less starch for good health? We will be soon approaching a world where all of us actually must eat LESS meat, as peak cheap oil will make the cost of ALL FOOD rise for everyone worldwide. Therefore this new diet theology is running straight into a moral conundrum all of it's own. Do these observations not seem acceptable to you?

Roger says he's "not interested" in what they may prefer to eat in Bangladesh. His children or grandchildren by default will be much more interested than he is, if we do not invent abundant alternative sources of energy to sustain the world's present elevated levels of agricultural production worldwide which are sustained by petroleum based energy and fertilisers. The notion of an American medic, writing a book on sound nutrition, saying he is "not interested" in what Bangladeshis eat, frankly only illustrates more starkly the general state of Americans self-preoccupation with "peak performance" nutrition.

Your further comments on these dogmatic objections?

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Your suggestion to avoid grains is incorrect.

Well, you may think it inadvisable or not based on sound reasoning, but it is not really an assertion, it's a recommendation. It has worked extremely well for me and my patients as I have detailed. If I am wrong it is at least completely harmless - I have yet to encounter a single benefit to eating wheat that I cannot get from eating asparagus, green beans, broccoli, wild mushrooms, romaine lettuce, etc. I think it is fair to ask grains advocates -what do they offer in compensation for the risk of coeliac disease, that we can't get elsewhere? Just because we needed them to form cities, are we bound to keep at it as a 10,000 year old tradition?

Clinically, I have had success in treating allergic rhinitis, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis eczema, and Type II diabetes. Many of these subjects reported rapid improvement in these disorders that they were surprised by, as they were only trying to lose weight

How do you think agriculture started? Do you think that one day humans woke up and said, "Let's start eating grains"? No.

Before the advent of agriculture, humans were already eating grains that they foraged. They then discovered that if they planted grain seeds in one location, they could make their gathering process more efficient. That was the birth of agriculture.

Clearly, at some point in or around mesopotamia, there was a technological transition to cultivated grain, when the storage advantage overcame the labor and cooking nuisance of using grains for food. Just as clearly, I think, eating of seeds that require cooking was at most an incidental or small part of the diet before that transition. Were there times and places of high carb consumption in addition to low like the Masai, the Inuit and The Plains tribes in north america? - With tubers I am sure there were, but I have not seen evidence of predominant grain- eating before agriculture. I believe the tribes with higher carb intake had levels of energy expenditure and enough food scarcity to keep insulin levels lower than if modern humans in cities ate the same way. Maybe in the distant future if there is slow, steady selection pressure, we will be more adapted to grains, but there have not been enough generations under agriculture for that to be likely (as celiac disease make clear).

Also, you fail to note that carbohydrate-rich tubers were a large part of the pre-agriculture diet. Grains were able to take the place of these foraged carbohydrate sources because they are nutritionally similar in macronutrients.

This is a fair criticism. Tubers are not grains. You will note that my 12 step list does not proscribe tubers. Yams and nuts are excellent food. The problem with saying "eat all the yams or potatoes you desire" in the developed world of superabundant food, is that their effect on blood sugar is not much different than a large load of refined sugar. I don't proscribe them, but I don't advocate them because they have not much to offer besides starch. Keep in mind my list is targeted to typical westerners in a carbohydrate abundant environment. There is no downside to avoiding grains when you have access to the wide variety of plant and animal sources that are not grains, and avoiding grains is simply an "idiot proof" way to make sure your insulin levels stay low. We are not duplicating what was eaten, we are trying to duplicate paleo metabolic conditions. Low carbs, fewer meals, intermittent fasting all keep insulin levels low. No grains, in addition to reducing the probablilty of coeliac disease and immune dysfunction because of our incomplete adaptation, eliminates the majority of the excess carbohydrates to the point where I can say, "eat all the nuts and other vegetables you want". Do you see the advantage here for efficacy?

You also fail to point out that the "problematic" chemicals in grains are destroyed by first soaking, then cooking. (Traditionally, grains were soaked overnight before cooking, or made into bread dough and allowed to ferment for many hours.) Fire for cooking has been used for some 125,000 years, plenty of time for genetic adaptation.

This is interesting enough i would like to elaborate on it longer in a separate post and add a few references. I promise I am not blowing you off.

I suggest that those studying the topic of nutrition not become overwhelmed by the "science", and use common sense to understand the bigger picture. (See my post here: http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...7133#post97133)

I am as critical of science as a privileged sphere of inquiry as you are. Although we disagree, I hope you would grant that my views are certainly not mainstream and are even quite at odds with a variety of government and professional medical organizations. I agree with your point that we much use all levels of inquiry in addition to our reason to make sense of the world.

Thanks Raja -I do value your thoughtful debate.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Good points, raja. I am also curious about the life span of paleolithic people. This link says it was 30-35. Doesn't make me want to emulate their diet.

Eliminating or cutting way back on refined sugar and white flour seems like a good step for most people. I look at what the healthiest people I know eat, and it really comes down to lots of vegetables and everything else in moderation.

Jimmy

Hi Jimmy

Average lifespan of paleolithic peoples is confounded by early mortality. Child mortality was very high and young males in some places had up to 25% percent mortality rates due to trauma (homicide/ warfare)
The relevant thing is if you can compare similar groups that differ mainly in diet.

As you have observed, for north americans at least, total elimination sugar and white four is half or more of the effect.

[Guest]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Both excellent points which I view the same way. A paleolithic population with a lifespan of 35 (or even 40) years tells you little to nothing as to whether their diet was optimal. In terms of biological aging, their chronology was probably not vastly different to ours - in other words, these people all died while their bodies were still biologically quite young - that means we'd have no way of knowing what our present lifetime's worth of their type of diet would do to one's organs. A young person can live on any kind of diet for a good number of years with relative impunity.

Life for them was "nasty, brutish and short" yet we are to prefer their dietary consumption over that of all other eras in civilisation?

The sensible mind which is hinherently suspicious of exclusionary ideas baulks at the idea that a *moderate portion* of grain based nutrition in one's diet, in a proportion found to have been naturally harmonious by 5000 years of prior civilisations, must be instead silently wreaking havoc, and we have only discovered this fundamental incompatibility in the year AD 2009.

"and it really comes down to lots of vegetables and everything else in moderation" - this is spot on and very sensible. When you boil it all down to essentials, this is the greatest part of what is useful out of any intricate dietary study, as without this one part, everyone would get sickly. That's the point I've been trying to make all along, but it is very "unsexy", isn't it? And we still have not addressed the advisability of keeping a 75 year old on a diet of 60% fats.

Good points, raja. I am also curious about the life span of paleolithic people. This link says it was 30-35. Doesn't make me want to emulate their diet.

Eliminating or cutting way back on refined sugar and white flour seems like a good step for most people. I look at what the healthiest people I know eat, and it really comes down to lots of vegetables and everything else in moderation.

Jimmy